The present invention relates generally to computer-aided designs for computer networks, and more particularly to computer-aided approach to design and select products to implement the design of a network, based on infrastructure specifications of the network.
With the proliferation of computers, users have been demanding to have their computers connected so that information can flow seamlessly among them. Such demands have led to the unbelievable growth of the networking industry. For the past five years, sales from the top 5 networking companies have grown over 27 times. Typically, large networking manufacturers are more risk averse and are not as innovative as small companies. Thus, to sustain the growth, many large networking companies have been buying smaller companies. For example, since 1993, Cisco has bought 13 companies and invested in 7 others for more than $6 billion dollars.
According to numerous forecasts, the growth of the networking industry may not be ebbing, especially due to the pervasiveness of the Internet and the World Wide Web. On the contrary, the growth rate might even increase. To counteract the dominance of Microsoft, a number of companies, including IBM, Oracle and Cisco, have invested heavily into a computing environment based on a thin-client, which is a computer without a harddisk and with all of its major software applications pushed from a server computer. At the expense of accessories and capabilities, a thin-client computer is relatively inexpensive. In order for a thin-client to provide sufficient functionalities to satisfy typical users, it is networked to more powerful servers. If these revolutionary changes become the industry standard, the sales of the networking companies will further increase significantly.
Many companies see the need to network their computers, or to enhance the performance of their existing network. Typically, a company employee knows at least broadly the problem he has to solve, which might be as simple as providing a computer in each room of a building, with all of the computers networked and managed by a central server. With thousands and thousands of networking products flooding the industry, he is facing a daunting task to select the right products and to determine the approaches to interconnect them. Not only is the sheer number of networking products soaring, the complexities in the products are also increasing, further increasing the difficulties in the design process.
Due to the large number of choices a customer has to make, if he has to select the networking products himself, it is not uncommon for him to end up with a faulty network. His normal approach is to pick a reputable networking company, ask them to send a sales engineer to analyze the problem and to provide a quote. Recently, a company in Quala Lumpur (the "QL company") wanted to provide computers for thousands of users in a 80-floor building. That company solicited quotes from one of the top networking companies, which sent at least four sales engineers to tackle the problem. They spent more than a month to generate the bills of materials, drawings of the network and the quote, with products selected from their own company, without considering products from any other networking companies. As shown by the above example, to design and to select products to implement the design of a network is a difficult and time consuming task, which does not seem to be getting any easier. Thus, there is a constant need for more networking talent. As a result, on one specific day in 1996, Cisco had more than 2000 technical or networking professional job openings!.
The four sales engineers in the above example were from a large networking company with thousands of employees. Imagine if the QL company approached a typical reseller with only twenty employees, due to the reseller's limited resources and expertise, it is probable that the QL company will receive from the reseller a sub-optimal solution to its problem. However, studies indicate that in order to increase the penetration of networking products into the technology industry, more than 50% of the products will be sold by resellers. Apparently, more networking talent may not be able to efficiently solve the difficult problem of designing a network and selecting products to implement the design.
Obviously there is a need for some types of productivity tools that can help a user with minimal networking experience to design a network and to select products to correctly implement the design.